Mountainish Inhumanity: Shakespeare’s 400-Year-Old Warning

I’m not someone who goes to plays or was ever considered a theater kid, but this act on a late night show almost had me in tears.

A heartbreaking speech that was written by Shakespeare and performed by Sir Ian McKellen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has really hit me. It’s wild that 400 years can pass and the same issues are still harassing human beings.

The setup for the speech starts about 20 minutes into the show -linked here.

McKellen explains that he is one of the only living actors to “originate” a Shakespearean role, having played Thomas More in the first-ever stage production of the play Sir Thomas More in 1964. He performs the famous “Strangers” speech, which Shakespeare wrote to address a mob rioting against immigrants in London. In 1517, the Evil May Day riots saw Londoners rise up against the city’s growing immigrant population. Decades later, a theatrical depiction of these events emerged in the play Sir Thomas More. Despite its historical significance, the script remained unperformed and unpublished for centuries, likely suppressed by government censors who feared its portrayal of civil unrest.

It’s not a very long speech, but one that we all should hear. He explains that the play takes place 400 years ago in London during a riot. A mob in the streets is protesting the presence of immigrants who had recently arrived in London, and demanding they be sent back home. The authorities send a young lawyer, Thomas More, to quell the riot. More addresses the crowd that their actions are illegal and an appeal to their common humanity.

McKellen then begins the monologue after prompting an audience member to shout “Grant them removed!” to trigger the speech.

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chid down all the majesty of England;

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs with their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Feed on one another.

You’ll put down strangers,

Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,

O, desperate as you are,

Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,

That you like rebels lift against the peace,

Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,

Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!

Say now the king,

As he is clement if th’offender mourn,

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,

Why, you must needs be strangers:

Would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;

And this your mountainish inhumanity.